


Just Let Me In

by Fandomoverload5



Series: Klangst week 2018 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, No way am I posting this a WHOLE ASS DAY LATE, Rip my life, also lance, anyways this is weird and confusing, hahahhaha i'm a dickhead, its on time, trust me - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 21:36:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14121324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fandomoverload5/pseuds/Fandomoverload5
Summary: Day 1: remember/forgetDay 2: fire/water->Day 3: fear/anger<-Day 4: light/shadowDay 5: create/ruinDay 6: alien/humanDay 7: give/take





	Just Let Me In

**Author's Note:**

> This is in canonverse. I'm such a mess y'all. 
> 
> Basically this is where the black lion is testing Lance to see if he's fit to fly her, but it's like messy. It's kinda not fear and anger but WHATEVER OKAY LEAVE ME ALONEEEE

Lance climbed up into the lion, feeling its energy course through his veins. This beautiful creature radiated power, and left Lances hands vibrating. "Come on girl. Trust me, I swear i'm good for it. Just ask Blue, she'll tell you. Please." Lance gripped the controls with white knuckles, silently begging the grand lion for access. Tears threatened to fall as he sat in that chair. 

Was he really not good enough? Obviously he wasn't good enough to pilot Black, as the lion sat deadly silent, showing as many signs of life as a rock would. "Look. I know I don't command the respect of others like Shiro or Keith does, but you can help me earn it. You're all I have, Black, please! I need you..."

Tears were sneaking out of his eyes now, and temporarily discoloring the spot on his collar where they hit. Lance stared out at the cosmos they drifted lazily past. He thought back to when the ship exploded, leaving him and the lion stranded. He could practically feel the blast, not to mention hear in great clarity his own screams of terror. 

"Oh god. Oh shit!" Lance reached for anything in a wild trance, like someone who is falling from a great height. He flailed in an animalistic terror, throwing softball-size chunks of metal away from him, begging any diety there was to at least throw him towards something, not debris. "Shit shit shit shit! Guys! Guys!" Lance screamed into his headset again and again, to no success. "Hello?" He was alone. 

He finally managed to calm himself and stop the hyperventilating, though it was tricky. He spun around to look for anything in the distance, as he strayed farther and farther from the Galra ship. His suit must've been more damaged than he'd previously thought, considering the jet pack didn't work either. Luckily, he spotted her out of the corner of his eye. "Black! Hey Black it's me! Lance! I'm friends with your lion buddies, Red and Blue! Please save me!" 

He reached out through the void for the cat, who was eerily still. "Keith just abandoned you, did he? Huh girl?" Lance finally came into contact with her, and gave her a few short pats on the side. The lion didn't move, so Lance assumed Keith was with unconscious inside, perhaps not inside, or... Lance preferred to thing of Keith as just not inside. "Alright beautiful, I need you to open up. It's a bit lonely out here, and much too cold for my liking. I won't even try to fly you, I just need a place to wait for Keith and the team."

"I'm sorry, Black! I know I made that promise, but it's one I can't keep. You have to understand. Black, i'm dying. It's been two days, humans usually don't last longer than a couple days without water. At least send out our coordinates or something! Anything! Please, Black!" Lance hit his hands on the dashboard roughly, and began to sob, extremely unattractively. "God fucking- argh!" Lance balled his hands into fists and leaned foreword, letting his head fall limp between his shoulders.

Knowing he was topping out on the self control front, he got up and hit the wall with as much fire as he could muster. He hit it twice with his right hand, then once with his left. He could already see the faint outline of red marks, that were starting to take shape on his knuckles, which beautifully offset the large dent that had been carved into the wall. "Fuck! Come on!" 

Her power still tingled in his fingers, making him all the more angry. She has the power to get them home, and chooses to let Lance die. At least he knew she could defend herself, if the time came. She might even fly back to the castle after all this. Probably with Lances body still in her. The bruises he studied on his hand, made him realize just how dire the situation was. He would probably die with these bruises. That made him shiver, knowing something so superficial would be on his corpse for all of eternity. 

He still had time, Lance attempted to convince himself while he shook off his own shock, Black could still change her mind (however unlikely). If Lance had just been in the next hallway over, he'd still be on the ship, and Black would still be parked on the side. "Well, if you plan on killing me, would you at least be kind enough to point me in the direction of the snacks."

When Black didn't respond, Lance sighed and flopped down on the makeshift bed he'd made on the floor. The "bed," by loosest definitions, was his jacket and the extra fire-suppressant blanket Keith kept in the back corner of the room, laid out on the floor in the shape of a person. 

"You know, I wish I got to say goodbye. You wouldn't let me do that, would you?" With no acknowlagement Lance spoke, a screen appeared right in front of the chair. It had one circular button on the bottom. "Thank you." 

\---

An hour or so later, he had finally finished most of his goodbyes. He had saved Keith's for last, not really knowing what to say. Luckily, he had time to think about it as he spoke to his other friends. He pressed the circle. "Hey Keith. I'm sorry. Right out of the gate, if I say nothing more, at least understand that i'm sorry. I'm sorry I spent all that time picking on you, just to make you mad. I'm sorry for the time I put unpasteurized milk in your shoes. I really care-well CARED... about you. Keith... honestly? I'm fucking scared. I know it's cheesy and cliche, but I'm literally dying, so I reserve the right to be as cheesy as I want. Black won't respond. You won't respond. I'm stranded. This dang lion has too much respect for you, I could never live up to your standards. I've always known you were better than me, to be uncharacteristically honest. 

"I guess I chose to ignore just how much better you were. Keith, I've been in here for days, and I haven't even made a dent with Black. Well, I actually made a dent in the wall from hitting it out of anger, but no trust dent. How do you do it? Do I have to confess some weird secret for her to even consider me? I'm just not meant to lead, I guess. I never was. I'm sorry I scared you Keith, and made you guys worry while I was gone with the lion. She'd have probably flown home by now, but for some reason, I'm unwanted cargo."

Lance leaned into his hand, and squeezed his temples as hard as he could. "If I was only a better person, this wouldn't be an issue." Lance didn't move, he had dropped his hand and just stared frozen at the once blinking lights of the ship, long faded into the distance. "It's probably because i'm always in your footsteps. At the Garrison, I was always sprinting to catch up to the other pilots. I wouldn't have even been fighter class if it wasnt for you washing out. Then, i'm running to keep up with you, Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro when we tracked down blue. She was my lion, and still she reached out to you. She wanted you, but know you were meant to move up to the black lion. I was scrappy seconds, Keith. Now, what lion do I pilot? Your old one. The one you left behind as you moved up to bigger and better things. 

"I'm constantly one step behind you Keith, but you keep taking larger and quicker steps. I'm fucking tired of staring at your back, while you keep walking farther ahead of me. Blacks just trying to put an end to me doing this, by killing me to teach me a lesson." Lance leaned back in the chair, basking in the silence he had created. He leaned his elbows on the arm rests, then interlaced his fingers in his lap. "I wish I had a chance to forge my own way. To prove myself worthy of Black, in a new way she's never seen before. I just wish we could talk, face to face, drop the language barrier." Lance looked around, searching for what he didn't know. He finally stopped, and stared straight at the camera

"Hey Keith, this is super random but... can you do me a favor? Can you remember me? My face? I know it's selfish but i'm dying so i'm allowed to be selfish. I wanted to go down fighting, it would've been a lot more heroic to die in the blast than here, but sometimes that's how it has to happen." He laughed pitifully, as he nervously fiddled with his hands, and the thin, fabric Earth bracelet around his wrist. "You know, now that i'm dying, I have nothing to lose." With a grin. 

"Now that i'm dying, I guess I can tell you this. I know this is such cringy, high school nonsense, but hey I already called it, that i'm allowed to be cheesy. Okay, so I kinda...sorta...had a crush on you. I know! I know, it's super gross and stupid and purely childish, but hey I had it." Lance laughed imagining Keith's face as he watched this video. "I know you're making you confused face right now, I can just tell. Don't worry, mullet, you were never anything to more than that to me, in my mind. Nothing more than a daydream. Maybe that's why Black is killing me, because she doesn't want anyone dating her son." 

Lance really laughed. Not the laugh he did yesterday, when he first discovered there wasn't any nourishments on board. Lance shook his head, as his fit died down, and tapped his fingers on the side of the seat. "I'm sorry I messed up, and got Black lost in space. To be fair, it wasn't completely my fault that we're still out here. I mean it is technically, because if I was a better person, at least she'd trust me enough to take us home. Whatever, I guess I don't have much else to say. 

Do I get last words? They won't be my real last words, I'll say stuff after them, mostly to myself, sometimes to Black, but these are what I want my last words to be." Lance cleared his throat and stared directly at the camera, showing almost no emotion, besides his faint hint of pride. "Go away. Don't look at this video every night before you go to sleep. Don't spend you life on me. Go out there, kick ass, be great. Be great so that you won't get stuck in the middle of actually nowhere, and starve to death. Go away and save some lives, Keith Kogane, and pretend those people you save are me. Is it tacky to say "goodbye, cruel world"? I should say goodbye, cruel worlds, right? Because there's a lot of them? Regardless, I just want to say goodbye, and forget me, but don't forget me forever."

Lance tapped the circle to end the recording, then sat in the eerie silence. "Hey Black, let's watch the stars, shall we? Would you care to listen to music?" The faint hum of an unrecognizable (probably alien) string instrument slowly filled the cabin. "Thanks, girl. You've got good taste." Lance sat in the semi-silence and just stared. He just stared. 

\---

A day later, Lance had begun to write. He found a good old fashioned pen and paper hidden in the back with the storage blanket. On this Earthy antique, Lance wrote about a few fond memories he had back with his family. Even one memory he shared with Hunk, from the Garrison HQ. In total, he wrote out in full detail his top five memories he ever made. It took him hours, although it was impossible to track time without any point of reference. Even any celestial body would work, not just the random and foreign constellations he was stuck with. 

He felt out of place inside Black. He felt unwanted, down into his very core. Even when he sat in the chair and slept away his last living moments, he still didn't feel like he should be there. He spent day three writing down his good memories, until he ran out of words. He spoke his stories aloud for Black to hear, until he finished story number five. 

"I guess, now it's time for the unfun yet sadly accurate part of dying. I'm writing down my top five WORST memories. Starting with..." Lance pondered this. He didn't have and specifically horrible memories, nothing that was so gut wrenching he was traumatized by it. "How about the time my mom flipped out at me? I cried for like two days. What happened after... I forgot." He sighed dramatically. "I dont have any crazy memories, besides this one right now!"

Lance rolled over on to his stomach and stared at the last fifteen or so, blank pages. "Black what's your worst memory?" Lance felt a pull of fear in his stomach. Pure fear. Rollercoaster fear times a million. Lance clutched his head, and curled into the fetal position. He screamed in horror, for no reason, completely ignoring his safe location. 

It wasn't his vision that he looked through, yet he could see flashes of things so clearly. It wasn't anything specific, just a random mashing of millions of memories, some of them were flashes from Keith's perspective, some from Shiro, even some from Zarkon. Lance couldn't control his body, which was flailing, as adrenaline was pumped straight into his body. He shook like he was seizing, even though he was fine, but blinded by that initial flash of terror from hundreds of different moments, in a constant stream. 

When it stopped, Lance laid on the ground where he was and squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't picture one specific memory from the bunch, but he could feel his heart beating faster than it ever had before. His breath came in shaky hyperventilating exhales. He couldn't ground himself. He couldn't feel the ground beneath his fingers, or the air in his lungs. "Hey," Keith's voice echoed through the lion, having Lances whole body freeze. "Long time no see..."

Lance sat up, without opening his eyes and smiled. If he didn't open his eyes, he couldn't see, which means he couldn't see anything bad. "Yeah I guess its-" "I know we worked hard today." Lance looked around quizzically. "Huh?" "It was a hard mission. And it's been a long time since we've been on one of those together. You did great." "Keith, what are you ta-" "i'm a bit rusty on flying you," he chuckled, making Lance finally realize this was just a recording of his friend. "I know, I know, but I still think we did a-okay. We're a good pair, you and I." 

Lance covered his eyes, squeezed shit, with his hands and called out again. "Black, what are you doing?" Just as he spoke, a hundred different phrases of Keith's poured into the room, then stopped abruptly. Lance continued to mentally call out to Black, his heart still racing faster than he could handle. She could do anything she wanted with him. His head felt dizzy from the lack of oxygen. 

"Black? Hello?" "Lance, its me. Keith." Lance didn't trust the voice, knowing it was just Black playing the sounds to him. "Keith?" "Yeah?" "Is this you?" "Of course it's me. Who else would it be?" Lance was even less convinced now, but he still played along to hear the voice of his old teammate. "Okay, in that case. How should I get home to the castsle." "I don't know, why are you asking me?" "I thought you might know, if you don't want to help me you should just say so."

"Fine. I don't want to help you." "You're a jackass, Keith." "Hey! You told me to tell you!" "That doesn't mean you do it! God, man..." Lance grinned, as he began to feel pins and needles in his fingers again. His breathing level off quickly, as he continued his conversation with fake Keith. "Hey Keith?" "Ah?" "What are you doing right now?" Keith's voice went silent, before it responded, "training. Actually, in between training session. Polishing my bayard." 

Lance laughed and dropped his hands to his lap. "Of course. Do you do anything else, other than fight, or prepare to." "No. Not really. Oh! Sometimes I eat a lot of food, that's fun." "True. I'm so hungry right now." "Why don't you just get something to eat?" "I can't. There's nothing here that's edible." 

"Hm. I'm sorry. I usually don't like to snack and fly. That's on me." Lance smiled to himself, refusing to open his eyes and remember where he was. To remember what he was doing. Right now, he and Keith were just hanging out on the bridge, with plenty of food and water. Nobody was dying. 

"So I get to blame you for my death. That's a comforting thought." "Hey, no-no-no-no-no! I didn't cause the explosion. That is on YOU, man." In mock astonishment, Lance exclaimed "Me? If you were there to back me up, I'd still be alive." 

"You're deplorable." "The best." Keith laughed, making Lances own fading smile, be restored to full strength. Lance reached out in front of his face, straight into the air. "Help me up." "I can't reach you." "Just-" Lance stood up, his eyes still squeezed shut, and held out his hand. "Can you see me?" When Keith responded, "Yeah?" Lance shook his hand again and commanded, "Take my hand."

Silently, Lance felt a warm pressure on his hand. It was by no means flesh, but he could feel something there. "Okay...now what?" Lance held out his right hand, at roughly where he thought Keith's hips should be if he was here. "Dance with me. I'm dying, at least let me have this dance." Keith chuckled, and his voice felt like so far away and yet, Lance heard him like he was inches away. 

"Fine. But i'm definitely going to step on at least one of your feet, if not both." The taller boy grinned and said, "Deal." Lance felt his left hand get a little tug, before he began to do a slow dance in the silence. He couldn't stop the smile he desperately tried to suppress. "You're smiling." Keith said, as a statement of fact. "I am." Lance grinned, "are you?" "Yeah." "Nice."

He slowly moved through the dance, to a song he'd long since forgotten the name of. "How's Shiro? And Allura? Or Hunk, how's Hunk?" "They're all good, Lance. They'll be good for a long time." Lance couldn't help but sigh in relief. He knew deep down inside this was fake, but how could it not be at least slightly real. Keith HAD to be real. 

"Hey Lance, you're super tired, yeah?" "Yeah. I'm practically falling asleep standing up." Keith's weird aura warmed Lances shoulder, which he guessed was like Keith laying his head down on Lances shoulder. "Go to sleep." Lance paused and inhaled deeply. "I would but...I'm afraid, Keith."

The black paladin stayed silent, then said, "tell me why you're afraid." With an exhale, Lance spoke again. "It's just...I don't know if I'll wake up. And if I do, I'm wasting what little time I have left being unconscious. I'm just...I'm not good with deadlines and this is...well, it's a literal dead line, me being the line that's dead." Keith sighed, as a silent way of asking Lance to continue. "I don't want to die, Keith. I thought I was willing to die, every time we left the castle, but I'm really not. There's so much I wish I could've done, or could've seen. So many lives I'll never get to understand. It's a tragedy really." 

Keith's aura's head lifted off of Lances shoulder, as he said, "but.. all that stuff doesn't matter. You've seen what really matters, and you've touched the lives of those who really matter... and they'll remember you. I promise. I know I'll never be able to forget you." Lance smiled in his usual mischievous way, and began to picture he face Keith usually makes when he uses it on him. "Keith... does somebody have a crush on me?" 

"I'm sure somebody does, somewhere. Not me." "Oh yeah. You definitely do. Most straight dudes turn down a slow dance from their guy friends." Keith huffed and said, rather indignantly "i'm not most people." "Yeah, because you're someone that matters, right?" With a pause, the head rested back on Lances shoulder and said, "I hope so."

Lance and Keith's aura danced until Lance couldn't hold his arms up any more, and he felt Keith's weird, lion-aura fade. "See you soon, Keith." He dropped down to his makeshift bed and fell into a shallow and restless sleep, still refusing to open his eyes. Just in case. Just in case.

**Author's Note:**

> This drifted so far from fear/anger im actually angry @ myself. I'm currently crouching on my bedroom floor like a hobbit, wearing a soaking wet towel from the shower I took an hour ago but i'm too lazy to get up. That's the mood of the week. I am SUFFERING.


End file.
